UIC, faculty union announce deal with salary increases

After two years of contention, UIC faculty members will get retroactive raises of 2.5 percent and 4.25 percent for the past two years. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

After two years of contentious negotiations, the University of Illinois at Chicago and its faculty union on Friday executed the first contract for the campus’ professors, an agreement that calls for salary increases during the upcoming academic year and other benefits.

The three-year deal, which covers the current and previous academic years and extends through August 2015, is for about 1,150 tenured and nontenured faculty members. It is the first contract negotiated by the campus’ relatively new faculty union, UIC United Faculty, which had been working on a deal since it was certificated in 2012.

Under the agreement, faculty will get retroactive raises of 2.5 percent and 4.25 percent for the past two years. For the upcoming school year, faculty will get a wage increase equivalent to the campus’ not-yet-determined “general salary program” plus an additional 1 percent. They also will get up to $1,500 each for research or other professional development.

The contract also increases the minimum salary for nontenured full-time faculty to $37,500 a year, up from $30,000. The union had been asking that the salary be increased to a minimum $45,000. Some nontenured faculty also will be eligible for multi-year appointments.

“It does have this feeling of splitting the difference. We wanted a number that began with a four,” said union president Joseph Persky, a UIC economics professor. “That will clearly be an issue for next year’s negotiations. We still want to move that number up.”

Nearly 100 of the campus' 384 nontenured faculty members make less than $40,000 a year, according to the university. A majority of lecturers are paid $50,000 to $90,000.

The union does not include part-time faculty or those in the departments of medicine, dentistry or pharmacy.

The union and administration tentatively agreed on the deal in mid-April, a week before an open-ended strike was set to begin. The union held a two-day strike in February.

About 98 percent of the union members voted last month to ratify the contract, according to the union. The agreement comes as efforts are underway to organize faculty at the larger U. of I. campus in Urbana-Champaign.

UIC’s chancellor and provost issued a joint statement in response to the contracts being finalized Friday: “Throughout the long process of negotiation and ratification of these contracts, the University and its faculty both remained focused on the teaching, research and service missions for the university. These agreements now allow us to move forward together to serve the city and the state and, most of all, our students.”